Vinod Khosla (born January 28, 1955 in Pune, India) is an Indian-American venture capitalist. He is an influential personality in Silicon Valley. He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986.
While recognized for several venture "hits," Khosla also played a key role with several of the tech industry's most spectacular failures, including Asera, Zambeel, Dynabook, Excite, and others.
In 2004 Khosla formed his own firm, Khosla Ventures.
He also invested in an Indian Microfinance NGO, SKS Microfinance, which lends small loans to poor women in rural India.
Khosla was featured on Dateline NBC on Sunday, May 7, 2006. He was discussing the practicality of the use of ethanol as a gasoline substitute. He is known to have invested heavily in ethanol companies, in hopes of widespread adoption. He cites Brazil as an example of a country that has totally ended its dependence on foreign oil.
Khosla was a major funder of Yes on 87's campaign to pass California's Proposition 87, The Clean Energy Initiative, which failed to pass in November, 2006.
In 2006, Khosla founded ck12.org that aims to develop open source textbooks and lower the cost of education in America and the rest of the world. Khosla and his wife Neeru are also relatively substantial donors to the Wikimedia Foundation, in the amount of $500,000.
Khosla Ventures areas are the Internet, computing, mobile, silicon technology and breakthrough scientific work in clean technology arenas, such as bio-refineries for energy and bioplastics, solar, battery and other environmentally friendly technologies. Khosla Ventures is based in Menlo Park, California and it was formed in 2004.
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